I have wheels! We finally found a new - well, new to me - car. The weather has since cheered up and school has broken up, but I'm happy to be mobile again, even if I haven't actually needed it the last couple of days. Now that things are more or less ready for Christmas, it's been a quiet few days around here. The cake is iced, the turkey bought, the presents wrapped, the decorations up...

There was lots of year end testing at school, so the offspring hadn't had much time for decoration making this year, but out came the button jars again for them to make some more button Christmas trees for their contribution to the tree.

These little felt trees were from a wee kit that I bought on clearance last year, thinking that I'd get the kids to make them, but I ended up making them myself on a night where mindless crafting was needed.

12-odd beaded snowflakes were thrown together, too.

We might be needing a bigger tree next year if we're going to continue this tradition of making some new ornaments each year...

Still, compared to some of the locals, our decorating efforts are rather tame:

This really is my favourite time of year, even if there is no chance of snow here.

I'll be missing my family and friends, but we'll be having lots of British foods and traditions, so hopefully there'll be a little piece of home in our celebrations. These days my American husband wears his paper hat out of the cracker without question...I hope that you and yours are all enjoying the break. Merry Christmas! (oh, and wish me luck: I'm a little dubious as to how my Christmas cake is going to turn out this year...). Take care all,

I'm not normally in favour of putting clothes on animals (they always look embarrassed to me), but it turns out that I will make an exception if a) the reindeer antlers are offered for free with the dog food and b) the dog in question woke me up at 4.30am for no apparent reason. He doesn't look too impressed, does he?

I'd love to tell you that my absence these last few weeks was caused by my spending all my time crafting away, but the sad truth is that most of my spare time has been spent either walking or car shopping. The walk to school and back each day alone is 7 miles. The kids have started to beg me to find a car that I like. I'm feeling a little downhearted myself about my lack of success in finding a car.

Still, I am making a couple of small gifts this year. Ok, so the kids are the ones that made the beeswax candles for their teachers. Yetagain. I'm too tired out to have any original ideas right now. My contribution was just the drawstring bags and British chocolates.

The little aprons are for a friend's two girls. I saw the idea somewhere of running the strap through a channel on each side of the apron, so that you can adjust the length of the neck strap by pulling on the apron's ties. I didn't do a channel, just ran the strap through holes at the neck and sides. It works, but I think that I prefer the old method of sewn on straps, adjustable using d-rings or something similar.

(They're reversible)

There's another gift on my knitting needles, too. Then I'm done. Which is good, as I also had to whip up a costume for my son's December around the World concert. I signed up for Asia, thinking "easy: he can wear his jinbei pjs". It turns out that my almost 10 year old is suddenly developing an opinion on what he does or doesn't want to wear, though. So, a quickly thrown together shirt, with a mandarin collar and frog closures (made out of knotted elastic cord) it was.

I actually quite like it. I might finish off the seams properly, resew the frog closures and make some bottoms for it, for him to wear it as pyjamas (still refusing to go with the American spelling on that one...).Well, I'm off to bed now. Wish me luck in the car search. It might just be coincidence that the weather took a downturn since I found myself without wheels, but I feel like I should apologise to the locals for the 4 weeks of rain and drizzle...Take care,

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